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On ar
Reviews 273

Mammars or NortHern ALASKA ON THE Arctic SLopE. By
James W. Bree and E. Raymonp Hat. Univ. Kensas
Museum of Natural History, Mise. Publ. 8, 1956. Paper,
$1.00; cloth, $4.00.

Having spent some time encamped with these two workers
on the Arctic slope, the reviewer can understand the pains-
taking quality of this work. He remembers the immense detail
of work in trapping and recording the microtenes, and it is on
this section of the mammals of northern Alaska that their
contribution is particularly valuable. Bee and Hall would be
called systematists, but they carry that title in the newest
sense of the profession, of those workers who recognize that
similarities or difference in behaviour and ecology have
significance in the establishment of specific rank.

The treatment of the microtenes is full and new. We learn
of their specific associations with different plant complexes
and terrain and even food preferences are given for some species.
It is when the authors come to species which they did not study
intimately that one realizes the excellence of the work on those
they did. It is a little surprising, for example, to find the coyote
listed as an old inhabitant of the Arctic slope, or even of Alaska
at all. The probability is that the coyote is a camp follower
into the far north and that, as elsewhere, it has increased
wherever extermination or reduction of the wolf has raised the
ceiling of opportunity.

Again, in the interesting passage on migration of caribou, the
extensive aerial reconnaissances of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service appear to have been ignored. The suggestion that the
rut in Dall sheep was “ well along ” by 19th August is based on
observations of fighting. This would mean birth of the lambs in
January and February, an unlikely event in the Arctic winter.
Lambs seen in June at close quarters by Leopold and myself
were certainly much younger than this.

The final section of the book, on characteristics of the
mammalian fauna, and on the biotic communities of the Arctic
slope, is closely observed and tersely written, a most welcome

addition to the literature of Arctic ecology.
F. D.

Joun anp Wriit1am Bartram’s America. Edited by HELEN
Gere CruicksHanK. The Devin-Adair Company, New
York. $5.00.

This is the fourth book in \the American Naturalists series.

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